ODE97: Filter By Form Not Available in Run-Time Applications

When you try to open a form in Filter-by-Form view programmatically in a Microsoft Access 97 run-time application, you may receive the following error message followed by:

The Filter-by-Form commands are unavailable in a Microsoft Access 97 run-time application.

For more information about simulating Filter-by-Form in a run-time application, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

In Microsoft Access 7.0, Filter-by-Form works in both the full version and the run-time version. However, the Filter-by-Form functionality wasn't designed to be available in a Microsoft Access 7.0 run-time application.

Steps to Reproduce Behavior

CAUTION: Following these steps will modify the sample database Northwind.mdb. You may want to back up the Northwind.mdb file and perform these steps on a copy of the database.

1. Open the sample database Northwind.mdb, and open the Customers form in Design view.
2. Add a command button to the form.
3. Change the Name property for the command button to btnFilter.
4. Place the following code in the OnClick event procedure of the command button:

         Private Sub btnFilter_Click()
            DoCmd.RunCommand acCmdFilterByForm
         End Sub
   					

5. Close and save the form.
6. On the Tools menu, click Startup.
7. Under Display Form, select Customers from the list, and then click OK.
8. On the Start menu, click Run, and then type the following command.
   
   NOTE: In the following sample, an underscore (_) at the end of a line is used as a line-continuation character. Remove the underscore from the end of the line when typing this command.
   
   NOTE: In the following sample, replace C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\ with the path to where Msaccess.exe is located on your hard drive.

         "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Msaccess.exe" _
         "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Samples\Northwind.mdb" _
         /Runtime
   					

9. When the Customers form opens, click the button that you created in step 2.
   
   Note that the filter-by-form view does not come up, and you receive the errors listed in the "Symptoms" section.